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| Great White North |
| Suspect was devoted to al-Qaeda camp, court told |
| 2008-06-27 |
| Canadian terrorism suspect Mohammad Momin Khawaja enjoyed his visit to an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and it appeared to have a lasting impact on him, a star Crown witness told his Ottawa trial yesterday. "He said he got to fire AK-47s, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and light machine guns," Mohammed Junaid Babar testified. Mr. Babar explained he caught up with Mr. Khawaja right after he attended the camp. "He was excited and he enjoyed it." The camp was built by fledgling British terrorists taking direction from "core" al-Qaeda members, and its graduates went on to kill dozens of civilians in the "7/7" subway strikes in London. The court heard yesterday that Mr. Khawaja, while not the camp's most notable attendee, travelled from overseas to put in his time at the Pakistan camp and always did whatever he could for the wider group. "He was there maybe two to three to four days - not that long," testified Mr. Babar on the second day of the heavily guarded trial. The informant, raised in Queens, N.Y., was living in Pakistan in the summer of 2003, and acted basically as a fixer for Western Muslims who had set up the training facility in the mountainous region of Malakand, Pakistan, near the Afghan border. Mr. Babar testified that about 10 young men, most of them British, stayed with him in Lahore as he helped transport them to and from the camp, 16 hours away. To assist in transforming the extremist Internet junkies into self-styled holy warriors, the witness said he helped supply the camp with fertilizer, chemicals and chemistry equipment, so attendees could practise making improvised bombs. Mr. Khawaja passed through the camp quickly and returned to Canada before the bomb-building courses began, according to the Crown witness. Mr. Khawaja, the first man charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, is accused of trying to build a remote-controlled detonation device for a British cell as part of a trans-Atlantic conspiracy dating back to two years before his arrest in 2004. But Mr. Babar also testified Mr. Khawaja brought a large sum of Canadian dollars into Pakistan "for the brothers" during his trip. And after he left Pakistan, Mr. Khawaja e-mailed Mr. Babar to arrange the pickup of another donation of 1,000 British pounds donated by a third party, in order to support the terrorist training effort. Mr. Babar also testified the wider group was granted permission to use Mr. Khawaja's uncle's house in Rawalpindi as a base of sorts - including for an intended meeting with a senior U.K.-based terrorist known only as "Q." The alleged al-Qaeda member from Luton, England - the shadowy figure known as "Q" - was one of three alleged "core" al-Qaeda members mentioned in passing yesterday by Mr. Babar. A related British trial has heard that "Q" has never been arrested. The witness further testified that two "core" al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan gave guidance to the group: An "Abu Munthir" in Pakistan (who was reportedly arrested in 2004) and an "Abdul Hadi" (possibly the "Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi" now being held in Guantanamo Bay). Certain graduates from the Malakand camp went on to plot remote-controlled fertilizer-based bombs around London. They were rounded up in Britain in March, 2004, as Mr. Khawaja was simultaneously arrested in Ottawa on allegations he helped build a remote-controlled detonation device for the group. Five of the British conspirators are now serving life sentences. Another faction of Malakand graduates was not arrested, and those graduates' freedom had tragic results. They were led by a man who was among the accused in the so-called "7/7" suicide bombings, which killed 52 Londoners riding subways and buses on July 7, 2005. The U.K. citizen's "martyrdom" video was later spliced with footage from top al-Qaeda figures lauding the attack, and circulated widely on the Internet. Mr. Babar, the star witness in the Canadian proceeding, testified he knew the 7/7 suspect when the man stayed in his house in Pakistan en route to the camp, a few weeks after Mr. Khawaja had done the same. Mr. Babar, who immigrated to New York from Pakistan when he was two years old, was arrested in the United States shortly after the fertilizer bomb conspiracy was broken up. He is testifying in Canada, as he has already in Britain, under the terms of a plea deal, in hopes of reducing his eventual U.S. sentence. |
| Posted by:Fred |